Armor Men's Health Show

EP 600: Bad Joints? Don't Wait Until They're Worse! Dr. Goldberg Shares Pre-Op Secrets for Post-Op Success with Joint Replacement

September 21, 2022 Dr. Sandeep Mistry and Donna Lee
Armor Men's Health Show
EP 600: Bad Joints? Don't Wait Until They're Worse! Dr. Goldberg Shares Pre-Op Secrets for Post-Op Success with Joint Replacement
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee are joined by Dr. Tyler Goldberg of Austin Orthopedic Institute. Like Dr. Mistry, Dr. Goldberg loves surgery. In fact, he has performed more than 9,700 joint replacement surgeries as an orthopedic surgeon! Today, Dr. Goldberg shares his wealth of experience with our listeners. If you've ever wondered, "Is it time to have this hip or knee replaced?" tune in to hear Dr. Goldberg's advice and his prescription for better joint replacement surgery outcomes.  Visit him online at austinoi.com or call 512-856-1000 today!

Voted top Men's Health Podcast, Sex Therapy Podcast, and Prostate Cancer Podcast by FeedSpot

Dr. Mistry is a board-certified urologist and has been treating patients in the Austin and Greater Williamson County area since he started his private practice in 2007.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the armor men's health show with Dr. Mystery and Donna Lee.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to the armor men's health show. I'm Dr. Mystery board certified urologist men's health expert, and so happy to be joined by my co-host Donna Lee. That's

Speaker 3:

Right. Welcome to the Donna Lee show.

Speaker 2:

That is not true. That is true. That is absolutely not the case. It is your show because you do the show all the time. Without me, job security people don't know about our practice, which, uh, is the sponsor of this show. AAU urology specialist. It sounds weird because I'm weird and you are weird. We have four physicians, we have four mid-level providers. We have two pelvic floor, physical therapists. We have sex therapy. We have nutrition and health counseling, and most importantly, a strong commitment to taking care of all of you.

Speaker 3:

That's right. And we also have sleep sleep study on site. A

Speaker 2:

Lot of people don't know that sleep apnea has an important role in urologic conditions. Mm-hmm<affirmative> and most people come to us and after they get in a full evaluation, really feel like we care about them, and that we've taken a much broader approach to their urologic concerns than you can imagine. Suckers

Speaker 3:

Suckers.

Speaker 2:

We do love our patients. We do, and we do love taking care of people. And if you have any complaints, please just email Donna donna@auurology.com<laugh> you can

Speaker 3:

Send us to,

Speaker 2:

Especially any FCC complaints, that's

Speaker 3:

Right, arm events, health.com. You can submit your questions to where we answer them anonymously, and they're amazing and magical. And that's what keeps our podcast going. By the

Speaker 2:

Way, some of our more regular listeners may have kind of come upon the fact that I love being a surgeon. What? And I love surgeons Uhhuh, and I love really good surgeons. Yeah. And I am so happy to be joined by one of the best surgeons. One of the best orthopedic surgeons in all of Austin, maybe the entire world, he goes all over the world. He goes to South Africa. He goes all over the world to lecture. His name is Tyler Goldberg. You're welcome Dr. Goldberg. Thank you so much for joining us on our show.

Speaker 4:

My pleasure to be here today. Tyler,

Speaker 2:

Where did you go to medical school?

Speaker 4:

Is that a pass fail question? Yes,

Speaker 2:

No, no, no. Yes

Speaker 4:

It is. I went to med school in Southwestern medical school in Dallas.

Speaker 3:

Oh

Speaker 4:

Boy. You know, I've heard that re the first ranked medical school in

Speaker 2:

Texas. Oh, that's weird. You know, it is only those publications by Southwestern Baylor college of medicine in Houston happens to be the best college in the world with the finest of all surgeons. But you're an amazing surgeon. Why don't you tell me what you do? They're pretty good. What do you do? How did you describe your practice?

Speaker 4:

My practice is exclusively devoted to arthritis. Essentially. I do a little bit of general orthopedics, but basically I'm a hip and knee replacement surgeon. So I'm not the best doctor. I'm not interested in like hearts and urology. Unfortunately, I'm so glad that you're out there.<laugh> so that makes me become an orthopedic surgeon, orthopedic surgery. There's so many fields to go into and I'm not interested in any of'em except for the hips and the knees. And for those, I could sit there and read about that and learn about that, that, and talk to patients about that endlessly.

Speaker 2:

So I feel

Speaker 4:

Like definitely my obsession. He

Speaker 3:

Doesn't like YaMmas and dinglings

Speaker 2:

As you saying. Well, I think anyway, that's not what I've heard.<laugh> so the incidence of knee and hip problems as people age I feel is almost as universal as prostate issues in, in men as they age, what would you say? I mean, would you say that like it's inevitable that all of us are gonna have hip and knee issues?

Speaker 4:

For sure. It's if we all live long enough, when a hundred percent of us will have a problem with our hips and our knees arthritis is going to capture all of us, uh, in due time,

Speaker 2:

I feel like people, blood sucks perseverate over this decision of whether or not to get their knee or their hip replaced for much longer than they should. When, when you're counseling a patient, you know, I'm sure you have your own metrics on when people should kind of do it. Sure. Well, why don't you tell me, what are the people really scared of? First of all, that you hear most commonly?

Speaker 4:

Well, I think people really want this to be in their control, right? So they want to control their healthcare decision making. They want to control when they're gonna have surgery on themselves. Sometimes they even want to control the type of procedure or the prosthetic. I'm not sure is really the best.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I love it. So they come in and they like, I would like a striker three millimeter, this thing. Absolutely.

Speaker 4:

They do

Speaker 2:

That. How the heck does your patient prosthetic to put it the

Speaker 4:

Middle? You know, when you get to Dr. Google, when you've got a problem, you become expert very, very quickly

Speaker 2:

Dr. Mystery. I would like my pen implant to be exact 24 centimeters<laugh> but sir, you really can't fit a 24 centimeter one, are you sure?

Speaker 4:

They say to me, oftentimes I know I'm this particular implant, cuz you're gonna want to use this, but do you think I'm a size four or 4.5?

Speaker 2:

I won't, I won't know till your knee is split open on that table. You

Speaker 4:

Know, let me do some work on that and I'll figure it out for you.

Speaker 2:

<laugh> so people want to be in control.

Speaker 4:

They do want to be in control. And so I always tell them that, you know, as far as you know, the, the captain of the ship, the captain of the ship is me. They're gonna do it my way and kind of how I want the things to go, uh, to get them from where they are, to where they want to be. But when that ship leaves, the dock is completely up to them. That's gotta be some shared decision making there. Good

Speaker 2:

Analogy. I think that sometimes people overblow disasters that they hear about. So like in the prostate world, the one guy whose vasectomy gets reversed, he tells everybody. So now you think that every vasectomy doesn't work and the one guy that has a really bad prostate surgery experience tells everybody. So now they think everybody has a bad one. I feel that's true about knees also in hips. Like the one guy that goes bad tells

Speaker 4:

Everybody it's just like online reviews, right? Mm-hmm<affirmative> so you have to take on your online review of your local restaurant that you happen to love. One person goes there and has a bad experience and blows up the internet with a bad review of the restaurant. Next thing you know, you think it's a terrible restaurant. It's actually a very good restaurant. And so it's usually kind of the one person that has a, has a poor result with the surgery is the loudest Barker.

Speaker 2:

So let's talk about hips first. So, uh, what symptom threshold do you think somebody should think about as being like, well, okay. I've waited long enough. It's time to get my hip

Speaker 4:

Replaced. Well, there's really, there's two things with, with any type of surgery and orthopedic surgery. It's basically two things. When you have the inability to do the things you wanna do, right? When something's affecting you every day, you can't do what you wanna do. And when you have pain at night, that interferes with sleep as human beings. When we start not being able to walk and do the things we wanna do, and we start not sleeping, we start to find doctors

Speaker 2:

Because, you know, if you can't, you can't, if you can't regenerate at night, if you're still in pain, that means that something is really kind of gone beyond just like

Speaker 4:

Absolutely good night's sleep is worth its weight and gold.

Speaker 2:

I feel like weight loss has a really important role in, in this. And sometimes I see patients say that, well, my orthopedic surgeon won't operate on me until I lose so much weight. And this, that the other, I mean, there's several reasons. One is you want to have a good outcome sure. For yourself and you want a good outcome for the patient. I mean, you know, like ultimately you don't wanna like keep operating on a bunch of people who are gonna have bad outcomes, then bark the loudest, right?

Speaker 4:

Well, it comes down to a risk benefit analysis, right? So anytime you take somebody for an elective operation, it's a risk benefit ratio. And those patients that are perhaps overweight medical comorbidities, those patients are at higher risk for perioperative complications. And it's the real complications, the ones that are really serious, that we care about the blood clots, the heart lung issues, things like that. So we wanna try to optimize those patients as best as we can

Speaker 2:

In urology. And you didn't mention this as one of the indications, we try to fix a problem before it causes other problems. And so in orthopedics, I seek constantly people with ankle issues, develop knee issues, develop hip issues on the other side, on this side. So it's almost like if you wait too long, you're almost asking to have more surgery, for

Speaker 4:

Sure. So you always want to sort of promote a healthy lifestyle. And if you're gonna intervene, sometimes it's more convenient and better for the patients to intervene early. So if a patient comes to me with, you know, arthritis and they're 78 years old and I treat them non-surgically for five years with shots, with steroid injections or something like that. And now they're 83 undergoing the risk of an operation. I'm not sure that I've really helped that particular patient.

Speaker 2:

It's such a great point, right? You're you're not gonna get healthier in five years. That's what I tell my prostate guys too. You're 63. You're still active. You're having to stop every two holes to pee. It's time to get your prostate fixed because it's not gonna help when I'm about to admit you into the nursing home. But

Speaker 4:

If you have a bad knee or a bad hip and you have it replaced in five years, you're more active. Your lifestyle's healthier. You're able to go and do the things you wanna do. Your sexual libido is increased. And so patients are happier with their sex lives. It can pervade every part of their life. That's

Speaker 3:

Why I talked my husband outta

Speaker 2:

The surgery. I love it. When orthopedic surgeons talk about sex, sex life and, and, and like urological issues, it's almost like watching a child play. Dressup

Speaker 4:

Absolutely. When patients come to you and they want to know what they can do to increase their sexual performance and psychosocial, you should go

Speaker 2:

Down replacement.

Speaker 4:

You tell them to come see me and we'll do a knee replacement and that'll go up.

Speaker 2:

<laugh>

Speaker 3:

I did not expect this turn.

Speaker 2:

It's a great point. So we talked about weight loss as something that people can do to kind of prepare for a, a good surgical outcome with a hip or a knee. Sure. Well, what are some other things that patients can do to kind of kind of help them assure that they have the best outcome possible if they're preparing for, even in the near future for, for

Speaker 4:

An operation. So if somebody's performing, if somebody's preparing for a surgery, it's pretty easy to me, it's fine to pool and get in it. Um, I don't care what you do. Just get in a pool for a certain amount of time, 30 minutes to go walk, run, do pool aerobics, whatever you wanna do, but that will do things to improve their cardiovascular function and improve their physical function of their affected knee hip. And the higher your function is going into a surgery. After you take that surgical hit your, the higher your function will be after the surgery. So we like to do things to really improve people's function preoperatively, because we can predict that to their postoperative

Speaker 2:

Function. It's such a great point, right? You don't want people being wheeled to the operating room because they couldn't walk anymore. This is not a good place to start getting an operation. Yeah,

Speaker 4:

Absolutely. So oftentimes I'll find somebody with a really decreased range of motion of their knee. And so we spend a lot of time talking about their, what their post-operative function will be after their surgery. Right? So I say, look, I know I will get you your pain relief. That's going to happen, but I want your functional outcome to be as great as possible. So I need your function to improve prior to, so we'll do things like preoperative, physical therapy, things like that, to make sure that they're as optimized as possible so that they can get their great result.

Speaker 2:

Tyler awesome is always well, what is the name of your website and your phone number? Well,

Speaker 4:

I'm so glad you asked because I did stay up all night trying to remember, remember this. It is Austin i.com. And you can go to that website and find the phone number.

Speaker 2:

<laugh> eight five six, 1005 1 2 8 5 6

Speaker 4:

1000. I'd be happy to regurgitate what you just said. It's a 5 1, 2 8, 5, 6.

Speaker 2:

You're a Southwestern graduate. So we'll use small words.<laugh>, we'll be right back. Welcome back to the Ironman's health show. I am Dr. Mystery, your host men's health specialist, board certified urologist, and incredibly engaging host of this radio show has told me by my parents<laugh> I am joined by my list nurse that we have Donnelly that's

Speaker 3:

Right. Hello, everybody. Welcome to our show.

Speaker 2:

We love doing this show. The feedback we get from patients, whether they're in Austin or all over the world has been spectacular. We want you to know that if you're out there in international land and you want to get a second opinion on your medical condition, I can't charge you for it, but I'd love to hear about it.<laugh> so send us an email. Uh, we have it weekly. We have at least three or four all across the United States and international people that, that ask us for advice or second opinions. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, you know, I'll review records. I mean, I love telling people that I'm better than their urologist back home. So, you know, it's almost a from Ireland. Yeah. It's a, it's such a, it's such a huge ego boost. You know,

Speaker 3:

I'm the best urologist in the

Speaker 2:

World. And we have people coming all over the country to get prostate artery embolization, to get high intensity focused ultrasound. I am very proud of the practice that we're building. And thank you, Donna, for all that you do to help us get a great practice,

Speaker 3:

A compliment that's rare. Um, I would like to state that we have been nominated the best men's health podcast, the best prostate camp and the best sexual health podcast by feed spot.com

Speaker 2:

And the smartest son by my dad. Aw, Aw. That's sweet. That's because he doesn't have any other son. We are joined again by a wonderful friend of ours. One of my favorite surgeons, Dr. Tyler Goldberg. Thank you so much for joining us again, Tyler. It's

Speaker 4:

Nice to be here. And, and Matt, I add I too am board certified. That's right. With continuing education.

Speaker 2:

There you go. So, and you teach people and Tyler, what kind of, what kind of doctor are you

Speaker 4:

A good doctor?<laugh> with

Speaker 2:

Good reviews. And by his reviews,<laugh>,

Speaker 4:

I'm an orthopedic surgeon specializing in adult reconstruction that has three or four syllables in it. It's a very complicated word, which means I replace hips and knees for a living.

Speaker 2:

So, you know, it is very hard to know what a good doctor is or is a lot of times patients will go to really big groups and try to like find, you know, their doctor that way. Sometimes they'll be stuck based upon what their insurance will pay for. Sometimes they'll go to like, you know, where their friend went to and had a good outcome, especially when it comes to surgery where you really only have one chance to do a, you know, I think about that every time I leave the operating room and every time I do a perfect job, I think I'm so glad that that, that patient gave me that opportunity to do that because you only get one chance to kind of do that. Perfect job. How do you counsel people on finding a surgeon, whether it be an orthopedist, but especially when it comes to joint replacement?

Speaker 4:

Well, I think for the most part, patients should pick the surgeon that they're most comfortable with. Right? Absolutely. I think experience certainly matters. And you and I having done this for a long time, right? I have about 9,700 joint replacements under my belt. Wow. We find that we enjoy doing them. We do'em over and over again. And we're looking for that P word, that perfect joint replacement. So if I'm a patient, I wanna find somebody with experience with the knowledge with the team to be able to do the job for me. But most importantly, I would, if I were a patient, I were asking a doctor what, what the question was to whether or not they were gonna be my surgeon. I said, are you the doctor? That's gonna take care of me if I have a complication because complications happen. It's just a fact of life and how that doctor delivers that patient through that complication with as little morbidity as possible, as fast as possible, really, really matters. And so you don't want a patient. That's had a complication sitting there going, gosh, I wish I had Dr. X do my surgery. You want them saying, I am so glad that Dr. Y is doing my surgery because he's getting me through this. Or she is getting me through this as fast

Speaker 2:

As possible. It's so important. So if you're out there and you have even a primary care doctor or your cardiologist, the problem is it's so hard to get into a doctor nowadays. You just feel like, well, crap, I waited three months for this appointment. I might as well just stick with it. But if you don't feel comfortable with your doctor, it's so important to emphasize. You need to find another doctor

Speaker 4:

For sure. No, doctor's going to be offended by you going to see another doctor.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely not

Speaker 4:

Second opinion. You

Speaker 2:

Usually

Speaker 4:

At the end of the day, we want what's best for you. Doctor.

Speaker 3:

Mystery's always offended though. When, when somebody leaves to, for a second opinion, but they always come back. Oh,

Speaker 2:

Geez. It's it's

Speaker 4:

Okay. You can leave me.<laugh> see. I'm an orthopedic surgeon. So I have like the thickest skin in the world. So somebody wants to go somewhere else cuz we don't jive. No

Speaker 3:

Problem. You're

Speaker 4:

Like, I'm busy. Wish you the best. We're

Speaker 2:

Good. It's funny how you use thick skin in thickheaded Neanderthal. And he said, P word, that's weird. Isn't it?<laugh> and he said P word. And he didn't mean penis or peepee. That is very odd, different

Speaker 3:

World over there in the orthopedic

Speaker 2:

Land. So

Speaker 4:

You mentioned, well, we do both deal with bones in different ways. One

Speaker 2:

Bone, one bone, you mentioned complications and having a complication AF what you thought was gonna be a, a surgery that was going to give you restorative function, I think can be very disappointing. But I feel like some of those complications are brought on by the patient. Not like actually going through like what they're supposed, because when I see what you're supposed to do after a knee replacement, I'm like, there is no way that person is gonna do all the things that you're supposed to do.<laugh> right. So why don't you tell me, like after, after a replacement, what are some common things that you see people do wrong? How do people maximize their functionality and reduce their complication?

Speaker 4:

It's fun for me as an orthopedic surgeon, that's kind of where some of the variability comes for me. I always say I do 10 knee replacements and I get 11 different results because somebody's gonna have two results in the same, right. Same knee. Interesting. Because you do the same operation. Everything's very streamlined. I have the same team that's been operating with me for 15 years. If something is often a knee, it sticks out like a sore thumb. So I'm delivering a very uniform product. Patients don't leave the operating room until I'm confident. And my team is confident that that knee is the best that it can be

Speaker 2:

Because the x-ray looks the same. Right? Like you, you take an x-ray and you're like this isn't the perfect place I did exactly what I came here for. I

Speaker 4:

Got the result that I was doing. Otherwise I was aimed at otherwise the patient would still be on the operating table right now. So it's one of those things that they have this uniform result. And then it's off to the race to see what happens and

Speaker 2:

Then you don't know what's gonna happen.

Speaker 4:

And, and then it's kind of like opening a can of what best. Yes. It's just a can of worms. Right? So

Speaker 2:

He has the worst analogies.<laugh> would you please contact the alumni? UT Southwestern medical school and let them know they need better, like phrase analogies. So continue. So tell me, what do you think impacts different outcomes the

Speaker 4:

Most, you know, interestingly enough, when patients try too hard to modify healing and modify biology, they sometimes set themselves back. So I call it sort of the alpha male syndrome. So somebody's uh, physical therapist says, you should

Speaker 2:

Do, my ears are burning. I

Speaker 4:

Know what, yes, you should do 10 of these. Well, the alpha male says, well, I'm gonna do 20 because that must be better and twenty's not necessarily better. And so when they think they're helping themselves, they're actually hurting themselves. And the body's gonna fight that the body's going to get its time to heal after joint replacement. So these are mechanical surgeries, but it requires biology to heal. And so the body's gonna take that time to heal. And if you fight it or try to resist it or try to modify it too much, body will fight you in your result. Your functional result will not be as

Speaker 2:

Good. So pushing it too hard is no good.

Speaker 4:

Absolutely pushing it too hard is no good. So, you know, I try to do sort of less therapy, right? So I have this big thing less is more so if you wanna know, if you should do something more and more and more think the exact opposite

Speaker 2:

Now, when it comes to a range of motion, that's a really big kind of component or, or metric that you use to see if, uh, somebody's having a good functional outcome for sure. Is that right? And so what kinds of, uh, things do, do do people do wrong after, instead of, you know, not just overdoing it, but what do people do? Like, like do do people like just sit around sometimes and just not do anything.

Speaker 4:

Sometimes they don't do anything. And you know what, sometimes the best range of motions of my patients are the ones that did nothing that were just total. Wow. Slobs. Right. So we're talking about perioperative complications, right? So I have a few patients, unfortunately have had like a stroke postop. And so they just end up sitting there in stroke therapy and, you know, sitting there and not doing anything and they come back six months later, they have 130 degrees of range of motion. Their motion is fantastic. Wow. Because they allowed their body to do what they wanted to do. Right. And that's what they deal the way I was gonna do

Speaker 2:

TikTok afraid.

Speaker 4:

Should you go too hard on things that will set you back? Actually,

Speaker 2:

How afraid should people be about recalls and implant things that don't go right. And having to come back and having problems that are beyond your control and their control due to, you know, the products that you're putting in?

Speaker 4:

Well, you know, we're humans and, uh, industry that provides us, implants are humans too. And so we're making manmade things. And so things happen. And, uh, you know, sometimes technology that we think is the best for people doesn't work out the way it should and it gets recalled or what have you. And sometimes there's a problem in processing and something gets re held. It's extraordinarily rare, extraordinarily rare. Like I wouldn't bank on it. Um, but it does. It's like the reviews it does potentially happen. And if it does, then we, we will find you and fix you. Right.

Speaker 3:

It's like the reviews, if something does go wrong, there's a recall, you hear about it on the news and everywhere, but it's really, really rare

Speaker 2:

Because all the lawyers are gonna for sure.

Speaker 4:

Right. If you, yeah, if you, you know, Google implants, particular implants, oftentimes especially one that's been recalled mm-hmm,<affirmative>, you'll have, you'll have the first 20 hits on your Google search, be a lawyer for, you know, a recall to asking to represent you. And so,

Speaker 2:

Right. So, so I, I feel like, um, experience a desire to do lots of cases, having a streamlined operation, all things are really important for something like orthopedic surgery. And you've really demonstrated that over and over again, to me, uh, in the operating room, unfortunately, they treat you so well that they don't give me enough rooms. And that's probably the biggest thing I lament

Speaker 4:

No comment there.

Speaker 2:

I would like, I would like to know your operative days in the future so that we don't have to share them. So they'll give me,

Speaker 3:

You know what, I bet Dr. Goldberg's on time to his surgeries.

Speaker 2:

You know what mm-hmm<affirmative> it's only because he's trying to make his tea time later.<laugh>

Speaker 4:

Oh, no.<laugh> we're not talking about golf today.

Speaker 2:

<laugh> thank you so much for joining us. How do people get ahold of you? Tyler,

Speaker 4:

Austin, i.com or they can call my personal cell phone number.

Speaker 2:

No, no,

Speaker 4:

No, no, no. I'm just tea. Or they can call 5 1, 2 8, 5, 6, 1000 is my office number. I'm so happy to know that and share that with you and your audience. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 2:

And if you want to get ahold of us, you can send emails at our new website.

Speaker 3:

That's right. Armor men's health.com. And remember to check out our podcasts wherever you listen

Speaker 1:

To free podcasts. Thank you, Tyler. The armor men's health show is brought to you by AU urology specialist for questions, or to schedule an appointment, please call 5 1 2 2 3 8 0 7 6 2 or online at armor men's health.com.